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Opinion Contributor

Keep Electoral College for fair presidential votes

The author said abolishing the system would mean ignoring rural and small-state voters. | AP Photo

By GARY GREGG | 12/5/12 9:29 PM EST

After a U.S. presidential election in which the Electoral College worked perfectly to enhance the popular vote outcome, a movement is now afoot to dismantle the college.

Instead of trying to amend the Constitution, the argument goes, the nation should opt for the National Popular Vote plan, which asks state legislatures to give their state’s electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote, no matter how their own citizens vote. Eight states and Washington, D.C., already have passed the plan.

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Making this runaround of the Constitution will result in dire consequences for our nation’s ability to choose its top leader fairly and effectively.

Why? Because abolishing the current system will strongly tilt elections in favor of candidates who can win huge electoral margins in the country’s major metropolitan areas.

Some are calling for a “direct democracy” in which an 18-year-old voter in California and an 18-year-old voter in Oklahoma will not be ignored. But abolishing the Electoral College would mean ignoring every rural and small-state voter in our country. If you don’t believe it, just look at the electoral maps and the numbers.

Barack Obama received 3.3 million more votes than Mitt Romney in the Nov. 6 election, but won 3.6 million more votes than Romney in just four cities — Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles. He won those margins without much of a campaign. Now, imagine an Obama candidacy free of the need to appeal to Ohio factory workers, Colorado cattlemen, Iowa hog farmers and Virginia police officers, and you start to get the picture.

If the United States does away with the Electoral College, future presidential elections will go to candidates and parties willing to cater to urban voters and skew the nation’s policies toward big-city interests. Small-town issues and rural values will no longer be their concern.

Cities already are the homes of America’s major media, donor, academic and government centers. A simple, direct democracy will centralize all power — government, business, money, media and votes — in urban areas to the detriment of the rest of the nation.

The Electoral College has, on the other hand, given us competitive and fair elections for more than two centuries. One reason Republicans feel so bitter about the 2012 presidential election is that their party lost when it had a real shot at winning, and they know it. It wasn’t the fault of the Electoral College.

What’s more, supporters of the popular vote plan haven’t stopped to consider the problems inherent in managing such a system. Will we have to create and pay for a new federal agency to verify the accuracy of popular vote totals? Probably.

One can only guess at the other nightmare scenarios that could arise, such as runoff elections and precinct-by-precinct national recounts in close races.

If we want presidential elections to be fair and representative — as well as efficient — we should push to keep the Electoral College in place, not dissolve it.

It’s a balanced way to choose our presidents that has proved its value over time.

Gary Gregg holds the Mitch McConnell Chair in Leadership at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and edited the book “Securing Democracy: Why We Have an Electoral College.”